[makes a roblox oof sound at week 7. anyway. you're wandering along when suddenly there's a rift! it eats you.
and you are just standing here, in a sewer. you are very small - maybe six years old? you can't exactly remember.
you are standing in the sewers under new delsta, the city you were born in. a man is standing in front of you - you don't know his name, or even what he's done wrong. he whimpers, and falls to his knees, staring at you. in your hands is a small knife. behind you is another man:
and he is watching you, specifically.]
... Go on. Give it a try. [the man says, in a soft, encouraging tone.]
NOT THE RIFTS!!!!!!!!!! He is so scared it's going to be the Warrior Cats one again, but thank god it isn't. He's spared. Well, until he realizes not only is he in the sewers, but he's tiny, and he has apparently maybe getting ready to stab a dude to death.
He freezes like a deer. He shakes his head hastily, yet... still grips the knife in his hands.]
thank god it's not the warrior cats, it's just a horrible memory where he has to kill a man.
you know the one watching you - you know him as Father. he gestures towards the whimpering man on the ground.]
It's your turn.
[you don't want to. you don't want to, it doesn't feel good. if you do this, you know that tomorrow, you will get your collar. and you don't want that.]
[Well, this is a completely HORRIBLE way to start the day. The hand holding the knife sort of quivers a bit with the anxiety of indecision. The voice pulls a very familiar, awful feeling up in his throat.
He thinks he knows if he does not do this, the consequences may be worse than a collar. Maybe.
It takes him a long moment before he steps forward toward the man in front of him. Does he even have the strength to push this in at all?]
You're still young and naive, Throné. [he sounds... exasperated. like the stranger in front of you isn't absolutely terrified. not of you, really. you think he's probably scared of father. a lot of people are. you are too, sometimes, when he looks at you like he does. one time, you watched a pack of wild dogs tear into a rat on the street, and watched the way they salivated and growled, the way they ripped it apart with a sort of gleeful air. the way father looks at you sometimes reminds you of that.]
You're wasting your sympathy. He's the worst sort of scum there is.
[he tells you this like he's coaxing you to eat your vegetables. like a father would.]
[father says, with a hum. it's worse even than ten - he feels six. ten is a different level - you think, distantly, about how when you were ten years old a man in a mask strapped you to a table and put a needle to your skin, tattooed a long black snake from your collarbone to your fingers.
that hasn't happened yet, though. and father's voice snaps you out of that.]
Come now, Throné. Once you kill him, you'll understand. [he continues, putting his hand on his hip. his eyes never leave the man on the ground, and his voice gets a little lower. wistful, almost.] You'll see how intoxicating the smell of blood can be. Soon enough you'll want to spread it on your bread like butter.
[but you don't want that. there's a little voice in your head that murmurs, I'd rather have raspberries...]
[Me looking back like damn the way it was so horrendous I aged her up in a desperate attempt to fix the trauma subconsciously.
HE'S SIX. It is worse than ten. Please don't talk about the tattoo at six. He had the shittiest life in the grand scheme of things, but even his shitty little poor crippled life can't touch abuse.
A rock sits heavy in his stomach at the thought. He does remember her meager secret offered to him at the first tides of being roommates. Blood. She didn't like the smell of blood.
He raises the knife a little more, gripping it until the tiny knuckles turn white. He tries to push everything down, to make his mind more blank. If he does it across the neck... maybe it'll work and be quicker.]
Everyone is born with a gift. The gods bestow us all with a job only we can do. It is our fate. Your gift was wielding a dagger, Throné. If you want to live, you must learn to kill.
[the man on the ground in front of you is opening sobbing now - no, don't, please, I'll do anything - but he doesn't get up, or can't seem to. his tendons are severed. he's alive, but in the way a mouse being played with by a cat is. or the way that a mother cat brings a rat to a kitten and expects it to hunt. finish the job.
but he tries to get away from you, and in the seconds that pass you realize he's afraid of you, now. this doesn't make you feel anything. maybe a little sad. but father said you have to do this, so...
across the neck should work. you've never killed anybody before, but. it... it should work.]
[Yes. The gift is wielding a dagger and using it... for this.
What he knows tries to rise up against the assimilation. His hands quiver again, or maybe they haven't stopped quivering since. Why would the gods give him this job, of all things? Do they really look at a baby and tell themselves, yes, going to make that one good at the blade.]
Sorry....
[A sorry definitely isn't going to heal the wound of being murdered, is it? He steps forward again, encroaches on the distraught man's space.] It'll be fast. [He doesn't say when. That's the only mercy he can give, is to not say when it's coming.
His arm leaps out like a snake, like the one embedded in the flesh, and he swipes the end of the blade through the front of the man's neck.]
[sometimes, the gods are unfair. sometimes the gods mark you, and sometimes, that's a better fate than what would've happened to you if they didn't.
as you do - you almost do it like an echo. like the memory takes over, guides your hand steady. you push the dagger into his throat, and then - he slides off your blade and gurgles, eyes glazing over. you step back a few times so that the blood doesn't get on your shoes, and you feel a little like crying. you don't, though.
behind you, father sighs out a noise that is - well, you don't understand it at this age, but later, when you've grown, you'll understand the noise is a little obscene. like the blood is almost arousing. as a child, you don't get it. you don't like this. the blood smells horrible, it makes you feel sick. it always will.]
Very good. Just as I expected. [father says breathlessly, moving forward to marvel over your work.]
[It's not good is all he can think. It's... not good.
With Sky, there was nothing to hear or smell except the acrid ozone of primordial arcane magic and ash. But that's a different memory altogether.
With the lump in his throat again, he stares down at what he's done. Honestly, he doesn't know how to respond at all. He doesn't know how to answer the question with anything that is remotely sane. Or smart. With Father.]
[that's okay. the memory doesn't require a response. maybe throné didn't say anything either. or maybe --
maybe it's just that the memory shifts. something black drips from the corner of father's mouth. and then faster than that - darkness billows from his eyes, his mouth, the wind whipping around the both of you. and then you're not in the sewer. not anymore - no, you're in an old church, the remains of it broken and rotting. you are facing that same man down, and this time, he's maniacal. he's bleeding from where you've managed to slice at him, and he's cackling.
you hear father scream your name, and you shove a dagger right into his gut, and --
and then, abruptly, without any warning at all, you are thrown out of this memory. and this time, throné is here as an adult with both her hands over her face. jesus.]
It's confusing, being so terrified, so full of fear, and then so full of disgust, and then heartache, confusion. All at once. A man that deserves more hate than maybe a heart can give, and yet,
and yet.
It's too soon for catharsis, or maybe none comes even comes at all after such a deed. He stumbles slightly as he's dumped back, full-body, but what feels like in his body. He tries to fix his ragged breathing, then startles at Throné. He reaches out immediately, steps forward, though hesitates with the gesture.]
[IT'S JUST THE WAY BATTLE SPRITES ARE IN OCTOPATH HELP
... and yet. and yet. there's this horrible, aching grief that she feels. a guilt. not regret, but just... the kind of thing you cling to, because it was the only family you ever had, and you destroyed it with your own two hands.
she drags her hands down her face and looks at him.]
He finishes his movement forward, touching her lightly on the shoulder and arm at first, and then wrapping both arms around her shoulders. He hugs her tightly to himself, trying to squeeze out whatever reassurance he can.]
[it's silly, almost. she's free, now. the collar isn't around her neck anymore, but she can almost feel the sensation of it, the fabric rough and coarse against her skin. she coughs a little, and then wraps her arms around him in return and holds him.
it's okay. she's alright. she's... worked through this, mostly, she's tried. people have talked her through it, as best they can. but this is years and years of something nasty and painful left to rot, and he's so kind to her like he always is, and she can't help it, she just kind of lets herself cling.
she thinks about asking if it was alright to call him dad, as he died on the ground of that church, and how temenos had frowned so hard it'd almost been audible.
she doesn't know what to think about it anymore, so she just stays where she is and breathes, comes down from the adrenaline.]
[He's sure it all plagues her dreams almost every night. That, for certain, he is familiar with now. Nightmares about the horrors. And he wonders, too, if she finds they ebb when she is with Arthur like his somehow quiet when he is with Lucien.
And he hopes that is true for her, that love, actual real love, gives her some kind of reprieve.]
It's me. I'm here. It's not real.
[His hold doesn't loosen from around her, not even to look her in the face.]
I'm sorry, Throné. I know that's very hard. I know that was hard.
[he's not wrong, is the thing. it's easier when she's around arthur. she's found something that brings an amazing amount of peace to her life, and she doesn't want to let it go.
and she doesn't want to let this go, either - the easy comfort viktor gives her, the kindness in his voice and the way he tells her that it was hard, and that it's okay to think that it was. the people here tell her this all the time. it's okay, you're okay, and you'll be okay. it's something she's never had before this.
after a couple of minutes, she's calmed down enough to speak, and she murmurs:]
[He knows she probably won't believe him entirely, not with "all of the great atrocities I've done," but he isn't without his share of atrocities either. You can be a good person and still make mistakes.]
Don't look back. You have so much ahead of you now, more than ever.
[she's... starting to believe it, at least. over time, people have convinced her to be less stupid, and thankfully she's one of the easier people to convince of mine. the girl has some self esteem! amazing!]
I know. [a beat, and she shifts so she can kiss him on the side of the head, gentle and sweet. get loved and cherished back!!] I intend to take it.
Also hehe. He will lean down and accept this kiss even if it makes him extremely shy when she does it! HE'S THIRTY, BUT IS ACTING LIKE A LITTLE SCHOOL BOY GETTING A KISS FROM THE HOT TEACHER!!!]
Good.
[It's her turn, without fanfare or warning.
She's in a cave built into a work room. Sparse and earthy, infected by industry. Piping, work tables, tools, and a giant tubular device full of strange liquid and a creature, almost completely dead, inert, submerged into it.
Throne can see her reflection looking back at her through the pod's glass, but it's the reflection of a familiar man who has slept only a few hours between several days, a man who aches, whose lungs are tight, who is withering away and desperate for life.
Behind her, is a man she knows from her childhood she has run to when all other options had been expended, a man she knows can probably help her even though his methods are the purist form of cut-and-dry research, detached from ethics.
He gives her an option to accept, handing it out to her in a little vial full of purple liquid. Shimmer. A variant. She thinks Jayce would understand, having wanted to help him so badly.
There is a price to pay for progress. Will she pay it?]
but she doesn't get the chance to really react to it so much, because she's in a cave, watching a creature. the part of her that is her does not like that - it's horrible and she does not want it to die. she gets caught watching it struggle for a second with a moment of extreme sympathy, and then...
the man offers her a vial.
a price to pay. there always is. and there's something about it that feels familiar. the price to be free. she hesitates, but.
[They will despise her, but none of them understand what it's like to know death is breathing down the back of their necks at the peak of their lives.
It's time.
She is in a work room very different than the one in the cave. This one, on the surface, is painted in luxury, progress. Posh. Elevated. Rich. The way Piltover looks to those who can only glean the outside of it.
She puts the scalpel down. There is something unusual on her she has not seen on the body she knows she is in: a metal brace from thigh to ankle, stabilizing the leg. But some of the pieces are familiar from the time long ago when she looked over his body, the slivers of it twisted into the flesh of his leg, becoming one with him.
She has carved tiny runes in both the skin of the leg and the metal of the brace, the same runes that are on each side of the many pyramids of the Core hovering in front of her.
The vial of Shimmer is in a syringe gun on the work table. This will work, she thinks. She believes. This will work. This is how she unlocks the secrets of life and death. It isn't like she has anything to lose. Her life?
She was losing it anyway.
There is a price to pay for progress. To give up humanity, to change a nature, to bypass ethos. Rio's life was a sacrifice to this. Little Rio, her body being kept alive inside a vat, a mutation you were told that must survive.
[she watches herself go through the motions, through the reasoning, through the convincing.
she thinks - there is a price to pay for progress. this is almost altruistic. sure, he's doing it for himself a little, but there's still thoughts of making the world a better place. she never thought about that, when she slid her knife into each of her family members. it was all selfish. it was all for her.
so... who is she to judge? she can't. not if this means she lives. if it means he lives.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w7, MONDAY
and you are just standing here, in a sewer. you are very small - maybe six years old? you can't exactly remember.
you are standing in the sewers under new delsta, the city you were born in. a man is standing in front of you - you don't know his name, or even what he's done wrong. he whimpers, and falls to his knees, staring at you. in your hands is a small knife. behind you is another man:
and he is watching you, specifically.]
... Go on. Give it a try. [the man says, in a soft, encouraging tone.]
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NOT THE RIFTS!!!!!!!!!! He is so scared it's going to be the Warrior Cats one again, but thank god it isn't. He's spared. Well, until he realizes not only is he in the sewers, but he's tiny, and he has apparently maybe getting ready to stab a dude to death.
He freezes like a deer. He shakes his head hastily, yet... still grips the knife in his hands.]
no subject
thank god it's not the warrior cats, it's just a horrible memory where he has to kill a man.
you know the one watching you - you know him as Father. he gestures towards the whimpering man on the ground.]
It's your turn.
[you don't want to. you don't want to, it doesn't feel good. if you do this, you know that tomorrow, you will get your collar. and you don't want that.]
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He thinks he knows if he does not do this, the consequences may be worse than a collar. Maybe.
It takes him a long moment before he steps forward toward the man in front of him. Does he even have the strength to push this in at all?]
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he hesitates, and father sighs.]
You're still young and naive, Throné. [he sounds... exasperated. like the stranger in front of you isn't absolutely terrified. not of you, really. you think he's probably scared of father. a lot of people are. you are too, sometimes, when he looks at you like he does. one time, you watched a pack of wild dogs tear into a rat on the street, and watched the way they salivated and growled, the way they ripped it apart with a sort of gleeful air. the way father looks at you sometimes reminds you of that.]
You're wasting your sympathy. He's the worst sort of scum there is.
[he tells you this like he's coaxing you to eat your vegetables. like a father would.]
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He swallows and raises the knife half an inch at the ready, as if he really has the nerve to do something like this when he feels ten.]
What did he do...?
[Just curious. What kind of scum is worth a life? Something heinous, right? Torture, rape, murder.]
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[father says, with a hum. it's worse even than ten - he feels six. ten is a different level - you think, distantly, about how when you were ten years old a man in a mask strapped you to a table and put a needle to your skin, tattooed a long black snake from your collarbone to your fingers.
that hasn't happened yet, though. and father's voice snaps you out of that.]
Come now, Throné. Once you kill him, you'll understand. [he continues, putting his hand on his hip. his eyes never leave the man on the ground, and his voice gets a little lower. wistful, almost.] You'll see how intoxicating the smell of blood can be. Soon enough you'll want to spread it on your bread like butter.
[but you don't want that. there's a little voice in your head that murmurs, I'd rather have raspberries...]
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HE'S SIX. It is worse than ten. Please don't talk about the tattoo at six. He had the shittiest life in the grand scheme of things, but even his shitty little poor crippled life can't touch abuse.
A rock sits heavy in his stomach at the thought. He does remember her meager secret offered to him at the first tides of being roommates. Blood. She didn't like the smell of blood.
He raises the knife a little more, gripping it until the tiny knuckles turn white. He tries to push everything down, to make his mind more blank. If he does it across the neck... maybe it'll work and be quicker.]
no subject
[the man on the ground in front of you is opening sobbing now - no, don't, please, I'll do anything - but he doesn't get up, or can't seem to. his tendons are severed. he's alive, but in the way a mouse being played with by a cat is. or the way that a mother cat brings a rat to a kitten and expects it to hunt. finish the job.
but he tries to get away from you, and in the seconds that pass you realize he's afraid of you, now. this doesn't make you feel anything. maybe a little sad. but father said you have to do this, so...
across the neck should work. you've never killed anybody before, but. it... it should work.]
no subject
What he knows tries to rise up against the assimilation. His hands quiver again, or maybe they haven't stopped quivering since. Why would the gods give him this job, of all things? Do they really look at a baby and tell themselves, yes, going to make that one good at the blade.]
Sorry....
[A sorry definitely isn't going to heal the wound of being murdered, is it? He steps forward again, encroaches on the distraught man's space.] It'll be fast. [He doesn't say when. That's the only mercy he can give, is to not say when it's coming.
His arm leaps out like a snake, like the one embedded in the flesh, and he swipes the end of the blade through the front of the man's neck.]
no subject
as you do - you almost do it like an echo. like the memory takes over, guides your hand steady. you push the dagger into his throat, and then - he slides off your blade and gurgles, eyes glazing over. you step back a few times so that the blood doesn't get on your shoes, and you feel a little like crying. you don't, though.
behind you, father sighs out a noise that is - well, you don't understand it at this age, but later, when you've grown, you'll understand the noise is a little obscene. like the blood is almost arousing. as a child, you don't get it. you don't like this. the blood smells horrible, it makes you feel sick. it always will.]
Very good. Just as I expected. [father says breathlessly, moving forward to marvel over your work.]
How was it, my dear?
no subject
With Sky, there was nothing to hear or smell except the acrid ozone of primordial arcane magic and ash. But that's a different memory altogether.
With the lump in his throat again, he stares down at what he's done. Honestly, he doesn't know how to respond at all. He doesn't know how to answer the question with anything that is remotely sane. Or smart. With Father.]
...
[So he does not say anything at all.]
no subject
maybe it's just that the memory shifts. something black drips from the corner of father's mouth. and then faster than that - darkness billows from his eyes, his mouth, the wind whipping around the both of you. and then you're not in the sewer. not anymore - no, you're in an old church, the remains of it broken and rotting. you are facing that same man down, and this time, he's maniacal. he's bleeding from where you've managed to slice at him, and he's cackling.
you hear father scream your name, and you shove a dagger right into his gut, and --
and then, abruptly, without any warning at all, you are thrown out of this memory. and this time, throné is here as an adult with both her hands over her face. jesus.]
no subject
It's confusing, being so terrified, so full of fear, and then so full of disgust, and then heartache, confusion. All at once. A man that deserves more hate than maybe a heart can give, and yet,
and yet.
It's too soon for catharsis, or maybe none comes even comes at all after such a deed. He stumbles slightly as he's dumped back, full-body, but what feels like in his body. He tries to fix his ragged breathing, then startles at Throné. He reaches out immediately, steps forward, though hesitates with the gesture.]
Throné...
no subject
... and yet. and yet. there's this horrible, aching grief that she feels. a guilt. not regret, but just... the kind of thing you cling to, because it was the only family you ever had, and you destroyed it with your own two hands.
she drags her hands down her face and looks at him.]
... Parents are supposed to love you.
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He finishes his movement forward, touching her lightly on the shoulder and arm at first, and then wrapping both arms around her shoulders. He hugs her tightly to himself, trying to squeeze out whatever reassurance he can.]
Throné... It's alright...
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it's okay. she's alright. she's... worked through this, mostly, she's tried. people have talked her through it, as best they can. but this is years and years of something nasty and painful left to rot, and he's so kind to her like he always is, and she can't help it, she just kind of lets herself cling.
she thinks about asking if it was alright to call him dad, as he died on the ground of that church, and how temenos had frowned so hard it'd almost been audible.
she doesn't know what to think about it anymore, so she just stays where she is and breathes, comes down from the adrenaline.]
no subject
And he hopes that is true for her, that love, actual real love, gives her some kind of reprieve.]
It's me. I'm here. It's not real.
[His hold doesn't loosen from around her, not even to look her in the face.]
I'm sorry, Throné. I know that's very hard. I know that was hard.
no subject
and she doesn't want to let this go, either - the easy comfort viktor gives her, the kindness in his voice and the way he tells her that it was hard, and that it's okay to think that it was. the people here tell her this all the time. it's okay, you're okay, and you'll be okay. it's something she's never had before this.
after a couple of minutes, she's calmed down enough to speak, and she murmurs:]
... Thank you.
no subject
You don't have to thank me. You deserve it.
[He knows she probably won't believe him entirely, not with "all of the great atrocities I've done," but he isn't without his share of atrocities either. You can be a good person and still make mistakes.]
Don't look back. You have so much ahead of you now, more than ever.
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I know. [a beat, and she shifts so she can kiss him on the side of the head, gentle and sweet. get loved and cherished back!!] I intend to take it.
[give me a memory back also binch]
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Also hehe. He will lean down and accept this kiss even if it makes him extremely shy when she does it! HE'S THIRTY, BUT IS ACTING LIKE A LITTLE SCHOOL BOY GETTING A KISS FROM THE HOT TEACHER!!!]
Good.
[It's her turn, without fanfare or warning.
She's in a cave built into a work room. Sparse and earthy, infected by industry. Piping, work tables, tools, and a giant tubular device full of strange liquid and a creature, almost completely dead, inert, submerged into it.
Throne can see her reflection looking back at her through the pod's glass, but it's the reflection of a familiar man who has slept only a few hours between several days, a man who aches, whose lungs are tight, who is withering away and desperate for life.
Behind her, is a man she knows from her childhood she has run to when all other options had been expended, a man she knows can probably help her even though his methods are the purist form of cut-and-dry research, detached from ethics.
He gives her an option to accept, handing it out to her in a little vial full of purple liquid. Shimmer. A variant. She thinks Jayce would understand, having wanted to help him so badly.
There is a price to pay for progress. Will she pay it?]
no subject
but she doesn't get the chance to really react to it so much, because she's in a cave, watching a creature. the part of her that is her does not like that - it's horrible and she does not want it to die. she gets caught watching it struggle for a second with a moment of extreme sympathy, and then...
the man offers her a vial.
a price to pay. there always is. and there's something about it that feels familiar. the price to be free. she hesitates, but.
yeah. she pays it. she'll take whatever this is.]
no subject
It's time.
She is in a work room very different than the one in the cave. This one, on the surface, is painted in luxury, progress. Posh. Elevated. Rich. The way Piltover looks to those who can only glean the outside of it.
She puts the scalpel down. There is something unusual on her she has not seen on the body she knows she is in: a metal brace from thigh to ankle, stabilizing the leg. But some of the pieces are familiar from the time long ago when she looked over his body, the slivers of it twisted into the flesh of his leg, becoming one with him.
She has carved tiny runes in both the skin of the leg and the metal of the brace, the same runes that are on each side of the many pyramids of the Core hovering in front of her.
The vial of Shimmer is in a syringe gun on the work table. This will work, she thinks. She believes. This will work. This is how she unlocks the secrets of life and death. It isn't like she has anything to lose. Her life?
She was losing it anyway.
There is a price to pay for progress. To give up humanity, to change a nature, to bypass ethos. Rio's life was a sacrifice to this. Little Rio, her body being kept alive inside a vat, a mutation you were told that must survive.
Draw the blood. Touch the Core.
Will Throné pay the price?]
no subject
she thinks - there is a price to pay for progress. this is almost altruistic. sure, he's doing it for himself a little, but there's still thoughts of making the world a better place. she never thought about that, when she slid her knife into each of her family members. it was all selfish. it was all for her.
so... who is she to judge? she can't. not if this means she lives. if it means he lives.
she pays the price.]
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